


Between the shadow and the soul

by ExpatGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel True Forms, Battle Sigils, Castiel's True Form, Established Relationship, Hugs, M/M, Pillow Talk, Post-Mark of Cain, Post-Season/Series 10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-19
Updated: 2015-05-19
Packaged: 2018-03-31 07:53:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3969949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is "In me all that fire is repeated", except from Castiel's point-of-view. I just couldn't leave it alone. I have problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the shadow and the soul

**Author's Note:**

> _Remember what I said about my obsession with angelic true forms? Yeah. This is...proof of that._
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> _I almost didn't post this, because, man, reign it in a little. But then I thought, well, what the hell, right?_
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> _As always, I hope you enjoy, and if you catch any typos, please let me know!_

“So, Cas.....”

“Mmm?”

“What do you look like?”

“I’m...not sure what you mean. You can see very well what I look like, Dean.” Castiel sat up a little in bed, regarding his own body, and then Dean, trying to figure out what it was that he was expected to say. Was this...some sort of game? Dean sometimes asked bewildering questions, or continued conversations he had no recollection of starting. Half the time, they revealed themselves as excuses to get each other out of their clothes. (Why, exactly, Dean needed excuses for this, Cas had yet to figure out. But it made Dean happy, so...) The other half of the time they veered into equally bewildering heart-to-heart talks. (Dean only approached these sideways, with great caution, which added to the confusion.) He could not, even now, judge which way a line of questioning like this would lead. Both outcomes tended to leave him feeling dazed by the end.

“No, I mean, you know...what do you  _look like_?” Dean was sketching vast, vague shapes with his right hand. The left rested along the back of Castiel's neck, but it was withdrawn as Dean asked his next question. “Like, your true form?”

 _Oh_. That....wasn't either of the directions he'd been anticipating from the opening volley.

“You've never actually said, other than saying it's as big as the Sears Tower.”

“Chrysler Building.” Cas corrected him.

“What?”

“It's the size of the Chrysler Building. Roughly. Not the Sears Tower, which is much bigger.” Dean gave him an odd look then and— _Oh, was he trying to compliment me? Maybe this **is** actually a clothes-removing question? _Cas wondered. “That's a nice compliment, though.” he added, just to be safe.

“Alright, fine, my famous skyscraper metaphor was a little off.” Dean rolled his eyes, but Cas could see a hint of a smile, and so knew it was friendly in this instance. “Don't deflect.”

“I'm not deflecting, I'm just not sure how to answer you.” It was only half true. He  __was_ _ deflecting, but only because he truly _didn't_  know how to answer. And, now that he began thinking about formulating an answer, he felt a ribbon of apprehension begin to wind its way through him.  _Why couldn't this have been one of the clothes-removing questions?_ Cas thought somewhat morosely.  _At least I know what to do then ._

He felt Dean's attention settle on the side of his face, heavy as sunlight. It made him blink in a way that staring directly into the sun never did. He turned his focus away from the human body he was occupying and regarded himself as he actually was—which, frankly, was something he'd never done before when he wasn't checking for injuries—and tried to think of how to describe what he saw. Alright, he could do this. He drew in a breath. An Enochian phrase floated up easily, but then when he tried to find an adequate translation, it slunk away like an injured animal. _Wait, no, not in Enochian, it has to be English. English. Damn it._

He had gotten better about thinking in English, rather than translating everything from his native tongue, but still, millennia-old habits died hard.

 _Why is human language so small?_ Cas wondered as he groped around for something resembling the right phrase. He felt Dean inhale, as though to tell him not to bother, and suddenly hit on an idea:

“You're familiar with the concept of the sublime?”

“The band, or the idea of something being really awesome?”

Ah. There was, of course, one area in which English surpassed Enochian, and that was in its ability to evolve different, simultaneous definitions of words. In this instance, it worked in his favor.

“The second,” he said, feeling some of his earlier tension dissolve. Now he had something to _explain._ Explaining things to Dean was something he'd gotten good at, now that he knew the temperament of this particular steel trap. “And that's actually a more fitting descriptor than you realize.”

“Yeah?” Dean smiled broadly, eyes crinkling up the corners in the way Castiel loved and could not explain why. “You're saying you're awesome, huh?”

“Well, yes.” Dean's smile broadened, and Cas was momentarily worried he would see sun-spots.  _Oh, right. Different simultaneous definitions._ “Awesome in the classical sense, I mean. Inspiring a sense of awe.” He paused.

 _Different simultaneous definitions._ “Or perhaps...awful.” His whole blood-soaked history suddenly swam before him, turning its leering grin towards him, black sludge pouring from its eyes and mouth, polluting all before it: the specter of good intentions that melted and ended in a shriek. He suddenly had difficulty swallowing. “Perhaps 'awful' is a better word to describe me.”

“Cas...”

“In the classical sense.” Cas said, attempting to drown the feeling that had gripped him.

“Uh-huh.” Dean said. There was no point in lying to him; Cas was terrible at it, in general, but especially when it came to him. Dean began to run his fingers through Cas' hair—had he really been  _that_ bad at hiding his emotions? Of course he had—and he grounded himself with the reassuring rhythm of it.

“So, you were saying, about the concept of the sublime...”

“Yes, right.” Cas said, coming back to both of his selves. “Something sublime surpasses human understanding. It’s so beautiful, or it...it possesses some greatness that is so intense that you become unable to bear it. It causes terror, or death." A quick amendment. "For humans.”

Dean's eyes stayed on him, then, but unfocused, and he could feel the heat against him drop a degree or two, a cloud passing over the sun.  __What did that mean?_ _ “That’s what happened to Pam, huh?”

Cas flinched internally. He hadn't even known Dean for one day, top-side, he hadn't even  _met Dean _,__ top-side, and he'd nearly killed one his allies. He looked, wide-eyed at the man next to him. "Dean, I  _begged_ her not to look at me. I knew—"

But Dean stilled him with a touch to the shoulder and a gentle look.

“Shhh, no, I know. I’m not saying you did anything wrong.” His expression turned bitter, but it was aimed inward. “Man, we were the dumbasses who asked her to call out a supernatural creature we knew _literally nothing_ about. That’s not on you.”

Dean was sincere, Cas knew, and so did his best to make himself believe it as well. “I suppose that’s true. And yes, that’s partly what happened to Pam. If she’d looked even a few seconds longer she would have died.”

“Partly?”

Dean moved next to him, turning his attention once more to Castiel's face. Again Cas thought of how oddly fragile human bodies were: how their very existence hung on a star, how they were drawn to it, how it gilded their upturned faces, how it burned them.

It was not, in fact, that impressive a star, and his Father's choice of location was something he'd long ago stopped trying to figure out. The sun's heat never registered with him now that he had his grace back. Kansas midwinter and Levant summer felt the same. Now, however, Cas felt his entire body suffuse with a strange kind of warmth. He turned his attention to the dim lamp overhead, if only to protect his eyes, and tried to think this through.

“Partly. An angelic true form is the very  _ _definition__  of sublime, and so it would prove lethal to a human being by sheer dint of being too much to take in. It would be the same with my true voice if I were ever to speak loudly or shout.”

Dean's face abruptly appeared where the sodium yellow glow of the light had been and...what had they just been discussing? It was suddenly difficult to remember.

“Wait, wait, wait. So when you found me in that gas station, you  _weren’t_ shouting? That was your _inside voice_?”

The memory was vivid, as though it had just happened, _was happening right now—_ and, of course, for him it would always be happening right now, had just happened a moment ago. He took in Dean's incredulous look and felt slightly abashed.  “I was practically whispering, Dean. I knew you were in a fragile state and I didn’t want to startle you.”

“Yeah, thanks for that.” Dean said.

Cas registered the sarcasm at the same time that he registered that Dean was no longer looming above him. “At the time, I thought you’d be able to hear my true voice. If that were the case, it really would have been quite soothing.” Why _hadn't_ Dean been able to hear him, anyway? It had never made sense—unless the goal all along had been to make him take a vessel and interact face-to-face. And how could he dare complain, after all, when it had brought him here, now, finally.

Dean caught his gaze. “Ah well, I like the voice you’ve got now just fine.” It wasn't what he'd originally meant to say, but the affection in his voice was genuine.

“I'm glad.” Cas said, and meant it.

“What were you saying to me, anyway?”

“At the gas station?”

“Mm-hmm.”

_Wasn't it obvious? Dean had read angel lore; surely he knew the script?_

“I was saying what we always say when we first try and talk to humans. I was telling you not to be afraid.”

Cas saw Dean's jaw work, saw him swallow, and could not parse the meaning behind it.

The absurdity of what he'd just said struck him, then. “I don’t know why we were always instructed to say that, you know. It never worked, even when people were better able to hear our true voices.” Thousands of years of panicked shepherds, merchants, peasants, appeared before him, all falling to their knees in abject terror. In the end, they had all died the kinds of deaths that justified such terror. “And anyway, people are right to be afraid of us...”

“So your true form and your true voice are both sublime. But what do you actually  _look like_? You haven’t mentioned that.” Dean interrupted, in an obvious attempt to pull Castiel away from his dark thoughts.

Again Cas felt bands of apprehension, tighter this time where they pulled at him. “Dean, I don’t know if I can truly describe it. Human language lacks the correct adjectives. English especially.”

“I get that, I do. But try anyway.”

So Castiel did. Once again he tuned out the human body he had come to regard as his own—and wasn't that a completely bizarre thought, an _angel_ with its own _body—_ and focused his attention to his true form. It felt as though he were seeing it for the first time. In a sense, he was.

Suddenly those inexplicable bands of apprehension had an explanation: _What, exactly, would Dean think if he understood the actual nature of the thing_ _he shared a bed with?_ There was a reason angelic true forms defied accurate description, after all.

He looked over at Dean, then, and saw the patient-but-determined look he often got, and struggled to come up with something appropriate to say.

“Okay. Okay, let’s start basic. Zachariah said he had a bunch of heads, and one of them was a lion, right?”

Right, concrete descriptions. This might work. Or it might backfire horribly. Of course, that was true of basically everything Castiel had ever done in his life, so why stop now?

“Yes. Multiple heads, in the form of different animals. All angels are tetramorphs, insofar as we have a physical form.” Here he hit another snag, faltering slightly. “Which—we don’t, strictly speaking. Angels are wavelengths, but also...” No, this wasn't going to work, and they were both going to end up frustrated. _“_ I’m not explaining this very well.” Cas said, by way of apology.

“Is it like the way light is a particle and a wave at the same time?”

Cas blinked. “It’s...yes, actually. It’s similar to that.” _Of course, steel trap. How could I forget?_ Underestimating Dean Winchester had been the downfall of many a foe, who'd stepped without caution and been dead before they'd even felt the bite.

“Hey, you don’t need to look so shocked. I occasionally do more online than look at tits.” Dean said. Cas felt himself blush in embarrassment, which appeared to momentarily derail Dean's thoughts.

“Okay, so you’re basically a sentient lightbeam with three heads...”

“Four.” Tetra. _Sam's the one with the_ _mind_ _for languages,_ Cas reminded himself.

“Four heads. Is one of yours a lion?”

“Of course.” _Obviously._

Dean seemed to sag a little then, bringing his forehead to rest against Cas' shoulder. This sent twin sensations through him: pleasure at the physical contact, and another inexorable tightening in his chest. He suddenly longed to stop the conversation, to grab Dean and kiss him senseless, until he forgot about anything but the physical reality of the body he could actually see, that he actually _liked_. But that would be a retreat—something Castiel was incapable of doing. And Dean wanted to know; Dean deserved to know.

Castiel continued.

“Another is a bull, or rather, a creature closely resembling a bull, but much...much uglier, I suppose, and fiercer. And an eagle, or rather....” He stumbled again.

“Something resembling an eagle.”

“Yes, though the bird it closest resembles died out millions of years ago. Palaeontologists have yet to dig one up, but I’ll be interested to see what they make of it when they do.” He saw the pitiless, unblinking eyes, the serrated rows of teeth, the crest of pale feathers, wondering if he should describe them.

“What’s the fourth?” Dean asked.

“It’s...well, something resembling a human face.”

“But?”

No, this was impossible. He closed his eyes. Every detail he took in, every description, was closely followed by an apology; every single one _warranted_ an apology.

“I am not an attractive creature, Dean.” Cas said. He opened his eyes and met Dean's gaze with considerable effort. “You must understand. I was not designed to be beautiful; I was designed to be useful in combat.”

“Shut up. Beautiful is subjective.” Dean said with unexpected ferocity. The hand on Cas' arm was gentle, however, and...maybe he meant it?

And yet. “Still, you’ve seen demons’ true faces, and they are creatures of loveliness compared to angels.”

 “Now I  _ _know__  that’s not true. You’re just being self-deprecating.”

Alright, fair point. “Perhaps hyperbolic, but not self-deprecating. Angels have no sense of our own beauty or ugliness. I’m merely talking in terms of human aesthetics.  We just are as we are and we look as we look.” _Or, that was true until twenty minutes ago._ Trying to see himself from a human perspective—something he suspected he would always find odd and foreign—often led to such unsettling insights. But Dean had a point.

“Demons, however, are repulsive, because they  _ _should__  look like human souls, but they don’t, anymore. It’s extremely....distressing to see.”

Castiel's mind suddenly called up another image, unbidden: dragging Sam out the Cage, knitting him back together with infinite patience and care, feeling that unaccustomed mixture of love and pride at his work. It had struck him as odd, of course, that he couldn't see Sam's soul when he was finished. But Cas had been cut off from Heaven, and he'd waved the warning bells away. He'd put it down to an absence of his own power, rather than the absence of Sam's soul. The thought was simply too abhorrent, the admission of failure too painful.

Dean moved next to him, and Cas turned to look at him with a strange kind of desperation frothing in his blood. As he met Dean's eyes he felt a fierce tenderness that stole the air from him. He thought he might die from it, that he would burn right up and do so happily. But, wait. What was that look? Something was wrong.

“What’s the matter?” Cas brought himself fully back into the moment, searching Dean's face.

“Nothing, I—“ Dean began. “Uh, I’m just trying to picture it and it’s...”

_Oh. Of course._

“Horrifying?”

“Impressive.”

Cas narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.

“So, giant lightbeam with four badass animal heads. Wings, obviously.”

“Yes, six.”

“ _ _Six__? I thought angels only had two.”

“Seraphs have six. We only use two of them to fly.” Cas said. He flexed them, feeling the sweep and power of them, absurdly, eternally grateful that they had finally healed. Their loss had been the cruelest kind of mutilation, the deepest effacement of his identity.

“What are the other four of them for, then?” Dean was asking from somewhere far away.

“To....veil our faces to the Presence.” Cas said, snapping himself back into the room.

“Why would you need to veil your faces? Why would God mind looking at you if He’s the one that decided how you look?”

“No, it isn’t that.” Cas paused. The idea suddenly stuck in his throat. “Or, at least, I don’t  _ _think__  it’s that. It’s that, just as an angelic true form is to human perception, so the true face of God is to Heavenly creatures. Only four angels have ever seen the face of God, and those were the archangels. They were the only ones who could withstand it.” Gabriel had never even been able to speak about it, getting an odd, blank look in his eyes the few times Castiel had dared ask.

“So even if dad came home,  and decided to get all the kids back together again, you’d still never be able to actually look him in the eye?” Dean asked. Cas could hear the frown in his voice.

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it. But I suspect that He could make Himself visible to us if He actually wanted to. To...to turn down the glare, if you will.”

Dean suddenly pressed himself against Cas, then, and Cas found himself returning the gesture, needing the contact, the reassurance, the warmth.

“Okay, six wings. Feathers?”

“With feathers, though they are also made of fire.”

“Wait, they’re  _ _fire feathers?__  What?”

“No, they’re feathers, on our physical form, and fire, on our non-physical form. They’re both fire and feather at once. Wavelength and particle, remember?”

“Right, of course, how could I forget?” Dean gave a slightly delirious-sounding laugh. Then Cas felt him breathe rapidly, tensing as though gathering his strength for something, or steeling himself for a blow or...or fighting off panic?

“Dean, are you  _ _sure__ nothing’s the matter? This is disturbing you; I’ll stop.”

“What? No!” Dean suddenly sat up. “No, I want to hear it. Trust me. I can handle it, and I want to know.” Castiel was confronted again with the ferocious gentleness of his gaze. Did he _actually_ mean that?

“Cas, you could be the ugliest bastard in the garrison—which you are not, by the way—and I’d still think you’re awesome. In the non-classical sense.”

It seemed he actually meant it. Cas took a steadying breath, feeling something begin to unravel in him.

 “Alright. So, where was I?”

“Um, four heads, six wings of fire, which are also feathers.”

“Also, thousands of eyes.”

“Thousands of eyes, right. Right.”

“How do you think we know so much? We see into all corners of the Earth and Heaven. Though, of course, things can be hidden from us, or obscured. And Hell is mostly beyond my perception, when I’m not actually down there.” Now that he knew it was allowed, he found it very hard to stop. But that was true of everything when it came to Dean.

“They look like stars more than actual eyes, but they are a means of sight.”

“Huh. That’s pretty cool.”

_Oh. Wow._

Cas felt the _something_ in his chest beginning to unravel further, faster.

Still, a correction was in order.

“Well, cool is probably the wrong word. I’m essentially made of fire. Or, something resembling fire, but much hotter. It’s why grace looks white. Angelic fire is much, much hotter than even hellfire, which is red.”

“Really?”

“ _ _Seraph__  means ‘fiery serpent’, in Hebrew. It’s the closest thing to an accurate description in a language people still know. It’s not remotely big enough, but it will do.” This brought him back to the earlier subject of their conversation, a point he wished to clarify. “That’s what happened to Pam, you see. It’s why she burned rather than just dying. That’s what happens when we smite—we turn up the glare, that’s all. That’s all it takes.”

Dean's attention wandered away, and again Cas was reminded of clouds passing over the sun. “So, like, a giant snake made of super- fire, with six wings—which are also fire, but not fire—and a thousand eyes—which are stars but not stars—and four heads—which are like animals but not like animals.”

 _Well, no, but also..._ “Essentially, yes.”

“That’s pretty damn trippy, you know that, right?” Dean pressed his face against the side of Castiel's neck as he said it, hiding his face. All at once Cas felt his earlier apprehension, his new-found revulsion, grabbed him again and squeezed. He had known he was a monster, of course. He had always known it. But knowing and _knowing_ were two different things; and now Dean knew it, too.

“I told you, Dean, I’m an awful thing. I wasn’t designed to be beautiful...”

“Beautiful nothing, you’re awesome, like you said. You’re telling me that you’re a  _ _fucking dragon__ , dude. An even more badass dragon than any dragon on earth has ever been. That’s better than some chick in a white robe with a harp.”

And suddenly it all let go. “It is?”

“ _Yes_.”

He meant it, Cas realized. He actually did mean it. Suddenly, he wanted to tell Dean everything, have him know everything. He could barely contain himself.

“There’s more. I haven’t told you about the Enochian battle sigils I’ve got, or the way our hands work, or....” It dawned on him that he was rambling. “If you want to hear any of it, that is.”

“I do, I  _ _really__  do. But not right now. I’m kind of exhausted, and Sam is going to be up and clattering around the kitchen in a few hours. I don’t know how it doesn’t wake Claire up, to be honest.”

 _O_ _h, right, sleeping._ “Yes, it is rather late. You should sleep.” He slid down from his sitting position and settled his head against the pillow.

“Mmm.”Dean rolled on to his side, then, facing away from Castiel and going still. Cas waited patiently for the little hypnogogic twitches that signaled his halting slide into unconsciousness, for the quiet, sleep-thickened murmur that happened as Dean finally let go. (Usually, this is was Castiel's name, which made something within him jolt. He had never mentioned this to Dean.) None of these things happened. Cas reached out, laying a palm on Dean's left shoulder.

“Dean, what’s wrong? It doesn’t usually take you this long to fall asleep.”

There was a pause. Then: “So, could I see them someday?”

Castiel rapidly reviewed the last hour. “What?”

“Your wings. Could I see them? Or...” He could practically hear Dean frowning, though he couldn't see his face. “Or are they one of those things I can’t see because I’ll burst into flames?”

 _Wait...what? No, that can't be right._ “You want to see them?”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?”

The answer seemed so patently obvious that Castiel struggled to find the words to reply. “I showed you just the shadows of them once and you were frightened. Which was my intention at the time, of course. But after we became friends I thought it best not to put on anymore displays of intimidation. I never thought you’d actually  __want_ _  to see them.”

“Well, yeah, okay, you had me pretty freaked out back there in that barn, but I’m not exactly the same person I was back then.” Dean rolled back over, facing Cas now, and staring so ardently into his eyes that Cas blinked, dazzled.

“ _ _Of course__  I’d like to see them if you’re willing to share. It’s  _ _you__  I like, whether you look like a radio ad salesman or some four-headed fire dragon. Or both. Or neither!”

Oh. _Oh!_ And finally that last taut thread of apprehension, which had continued to tug at his heart—the heart that belonged only to him, now—finally snapped.

Dean put his arm around him then. “Though this form makes sharing a bed and various bed-related activities much easier and more fun.”

And yes, there was that. He suddenly found himself smiling at the memories that unfurled in front of him, found himself laughing with giddiness, with relief, with the love he felt echoed back at him. “Yes, I’d agree with that, now that I’ve finally figured out how to get this vessel to actually feel things through its own sensory system rather than channeling everything through my grace. That was a fun learning curve.”

“Ha! Yes, it was.” Dean said. “But I meant what I said.” he continued, suddenly serious, intent. “If you feel like sharing, I feel like seeing. Okay? And if you don’t want to share, then that’s cool, too.”

“I—okay. Okay.” Looking at him then, Cas realized that he'd never wanted anything quite so much as to have Dean see him—really see him, really know him. Cas felt a sensation that was so similar to flying that he had to check that he was still earth-bound. “Thank you. I do feel like sharing. Soon. But not right now—it’s late, and you really  __do_ _ need to sleep.” He was a creature of infinite practicality, after all.

“Okay.” Dean did not turn away this time, but kept his arm where it was. “Can’t wait.” he said, smiling.

“Neither can I. Now get some sleep.” Cas pulled him closer, seeing stars, weightless, and felt as sleep finally found Dean. The last thing he said was Castiel's name, as quiet as any prayer.


End file.
